


Lost and Found

by Kitsoa



Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: Gen, and I love Umino a whole lot she is my daughter, anxiety attack, so have some hurt and comfort!, writing is cathartic people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 02:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7341685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsoa/pseuds/Kitsoa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The limit is breached and the social creature breaks. They had become the very air she breathed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> Response to another prompt-- this time its (#27) Lost and Found! I can't shake the theory that there are some serious emotional consequences to an isolated/ostracized Seraph. I mean they're social creatures! So I present to you: potential angst. :)

Umino Tsubame was choking.

It registered suddenly as the droll tone of her modern lit professor lulled her into maximum boredom. She jerk with a startled gasp which made the entire class snap in her direction at the shattered reverie. Lungs vanishing beneath her ribs, Umino was left with a shocking void that brought her hands scrambling to her chest instantly.

“Umino-san?” The professor was barely registered, the blue haired girl staggered out of her seat– a motion much too fast as the world lurched in protest. Her chair crashed to the floor.

“Umino-san!” The concern was in vain though as a vigilant neighboring body found the alarm to stand. Her bespectacled companion Kumada tried to steady the her wavering friend who proceeded to heave shallow and fruitless breaths. Her watering eyes darted frantically in a reaction of pure panic. Like the persisting rev of a dead engine Umino made squelching attempts for air. She whimpered, helpless.

They were saying her name, but all the girl could think about was how she couldn’t breathe. Kuma had managed to escort the girl into the hallway where she sat her down on the floor against the wall. Her friend gripped at her shoulders as though it was the only thing keeping her on the ground.

“Tsubame!” Kuma was almost in tears. She heard the door to their classroom slide open and the professor join the attempt.

A liquid chill sat square on her chest during her pathetic heaves. It spread through her limbs and made the hot tears on her cheeks burn salty tracks in contrast. Her brain was screaming and she openly sobbed, helpless to the sudden onset.

_‘Umino?’_

Everything froze. Eishi’s voice echoed in her mind, laced with worry. Umino shuddered at the instant tickle of relief. His name was on her lips, but she couldn’t find the energy to speak.

Something in her unrest clicked and heavy floodgates lifted. Air entered in a hungry rush. Barely a moment had passed, but she couldn’t help the grateful and frankly astonished smile between the tears and heavy catch breaths.

‘Thank you… thank you.’ She knew they couldn’t hear her tweets just yet but she projected them regardless. The sheer memory of his voice teased a satisfying wholeness– like the a precisely completed puzzle. As her body slowly uncoiled from the intense stress she longed for him to speak to her again.

_‘I wish you could tweet back. Send a text please.’_ It lingered in her ears, the haze around her slowly lifting.

Meanwhile, the garbling voices of concern in her physical presence were growing in focus. Her friend and professor at her side observed in confusion, the episode passing as quickly as it came. Umino took another slow intake of oxygen. They exchanged a quick word and began helping her to her feet, the intention to escort to the nurse’s office most likely.

_‘Come on… I can’t explain how just let me know you’re okay.’_

He was usually more self-conscious because these were wide-range broadcasts, but he uncharacteristically spoke without reservations. A small part of her wanted to stay silent to incite more dialogue however cruel that was. Despite not being a physical sound, his voice had the soothing qualities of real rumbling vibrations, like resting your head on a gently playing piano. She trembled with satisfaction even among the buzzing fatigue.

She sat on the nurse’s bed, Kumada leaving the room with a lingering look. Umino didn’t want to register her friends clear frustration with her so she looked at her phone. Prior exchanges with Eishi swept by in the screen at the command of her aimless thumb. An unsent message was locked into view.

[I’m okay XD]. She hovered over the send button while she relived the moment leading up to her panic attack.

It was the unease. The annoying discomfort that took the form of a heavy rubber ball knocking around her insides and fluctuating in density. She felt it most often in modern lit– her least engaging class where the monotonous lecturing left the students in various states of slumber. The ball had been heavy enough to draw concern in her brow so she had buried her nose into her novel, desperate to dissuade her mind from labeling the discomfort with more accuracy. Yet the nonsense of the text only pushed her into observing her environment. That’s when she made the mistake of looking out the window.

Longing. It overwhelmed her in an instant.

She was fortunate that her back was to the window in the nurse’s office. It casted a natural, tempting glow into the room and made the shadows gloomier. The feeling was coming back, yet she was a little less in-the-moment now. It was like watching an oncoming train– inevitable, and mesmerizing. It invited a different discomfort, less mournful and more agitated.

The ticking clock seemed decibels louder. The hum of the fluorescent lights resembled buzzing mosquitos. She had to get out of here. The fear of suffocation fresh in her memory, Umino jumped to her feet in a fit of stir craze and darted out of the room. The thrill of rule breaking pushed the discomfort into the background if only for a moment as she slyly left the campus property. She didn’t even return for her things.

* * *

_‘Turn the corner.’_

Umino paused in the waning shopping district between school and her home. There was her saving grace. Heart fluttering in anticipation, she looked to the nearest alley. It was ironic that she found her greatest source of light in the literal shadows, but there it was. Countless nights melding into the night sky gave her the familiarity to pick out each of their silhouettes.

The entire flock– Eishi, Kamoda, Rei, and even Takayama were almost comically crammed in the small urban space. Their vast wings were taut, ready to launch into the sky at the observance of a stranger and their masks cautiously enveloped their mouths. Nevertheless, gleaming eyes pierced through with respective levels of worry.

“Umino.” Eishi approached her with a self-conscious, but determined step. The light shaved fractions of his sharp face into view. It was lately that she found herself associating his image with words like respect and trust. He was an assuring sight as he was a sound. And there he was, saying her name.

“K-Karasuma…” A pressure mounted behind her eyes. At the sheer sight of them, the ball of unease that drained and beat her found a cancerous flicker of emotion. It ignited like a spark to dry foliage and swept her into it’s embrace before a label could be diagnosed… Joy. It was joy…

And it hit her like the bus crash that started this crazy life of hers.

She met Eishi in the middle, crashing her face into his neck with an overwhelmed cry.  

Confused, caught off guard, and definitely blushing, Eishi awkwardly returned her embrace with a clawed hand while pulling her into the protective shadows of the alley. She was showered in the tarry texture of their wings as the flock encircled the distressed girl. 

The void. It was the loneliness she carried with her when every cell in her body screamed at her to be with them, to take to the skies and leave her responsibilities to gravity. She wept, wounded by the void’s vicious assault. She held her breath once more, this time to stifle the whines of grief, the temptation to question why blindly. As her flock’s warm, comforting, completing presence caressed her convulsing cries, her bitter memory begged for a redo–cursing their ignorance and her shocking dependence. Yet her heart simply sighed at the euphoric instinct that affirmed this unified moment with the confidence of the second hand on a clock. They were here. She needed them and they were here.

Serious with concern, Eishi was about to press the girl for details when a look from Sagisawa snuffed him into silence. Her childhood friend looked particularly pitying, within the expression was a hint of comprehension that alluded to a fulfilled prophecy he must of sensed with helpless foresight. Kamoda put a hand on her shoulder, a pout clearly on his lips. The way he opened his mouth from time to time suggested that he was having a harder time holding his tongue than Eishi.

And then there was the familiar gaze of Takayama which consumed the Bellwether with a cautious message.

_‘She broke today,’_ He tweeted to Eishi alone. His eyes were red with warning, but exuded no anger.

Eishi was wordless returning his gaze to the crying girl– no, his weeping kin. The true weight of this limit was dawning on him and spiking him with a substantial fear. They couldn’t carry on as they were. It was only in tragedy that Umino had to suffer to discover this.

Pity moved his hand in an unconscious stroke of comfort on her back where her bird mark pulsed, desperate to transform. _They_ did this.

_‘I’m so sorry…’_

He wove his wings forward and rested them around the girl gently. Sagisawa and Kamoda were quick to follow, draping her in a protective cloak of black. Takayama only hesitated in his standard blank evaluation before completing the shield, effectively removing the weary girl from the woes of her settling reality. The war of overwhelming relief and crushing loneliness found armistice in her cocoon of wings where only the salty scars of tears remained.

They didn’t exactly know why they did that– it just felt like the right thing to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m projecting rather poorly the memory I have of an anxiety attack. I assume they’d have to somehow get Umino transferred to their school for the sake of her health and sanity– a strangely domestic challenge if ever there was one. I’ve been saying for a while that Umino is a time bomb and considering the set up of the current manga, this could only be a minor dramatization of her breaking point. I love fluff and I’m dying to portray a gushy little bird pile of cuddles so that’s why I did that. Hurray for self-indulging!


End file.
